Getting Your Hands On Five Days At Memorial Book
The book is a nonfiction account by Scott Turow about the events at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. It came out in 2015 and has stayed in print since then. If you're looking for a copy, you can find it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository, or any decent bookstore. The paperback edition runs about 480 pages and usually retails between $16 and $20 depending on the seller. I got my copy through Amazon a few years back. What I didn't expect was how much the audiobook version actually improves the experience. The narration is done by Kevin Pariseau and he reads it straight without any theatrical flourishes, which is exactly what this subject matter needs. The Kindle version works fine too if you want to highlight sections. I tend to keep the paperback around because I reference certain passages when discussing the ethical dilemmas with other people.
What You Actually Get With Five Days At Memorial Book
The core of the story covers five days in late August 2005. Memorial Medical Center lost power. The staff was stranded with patients who couldn't be moved easily. A controversy emerged around whether some patients were given lethal injections during the evacuation chaos. Turow spent years researching this, talking to doctors, nurses, lawyers, and the families involved. He doesn't come to easy conclusions. One thing that catches people off guard is how detailed the legal and medical background is. There are footnotes. There are appendices with timelines. The index alone took me longer to read than some novels I've finished. This isn't a light beach read. It's thorough to the point where you might want a notebook if you're tracking which patient went with which doctor. Here's something most summaries don't mention. The book deliberately structure its narrative around conflicting accounts of the same events. You'll read one version of what happened from a nurse's perspective and then immediately get the physician's version that contradicts it. Turow doesn't resolve these contradictions for you. That's intentional. The ambiguity is the point. When I first read through it, I kept going back to re-read sections because the two accounts diverged so sharply on key moments.
There's also a practical side to this book that people overlook. It's been used as a case study in medical ethics courses at several universities. If you're a medical professional or student, the discussion questions at the end aren't filler. They're genuinely useful for structured debates about triage protocols and end-of-life decision making under resource scarcity. I've seen hospital ethics committees pull chapters from it for training sessions. A couple of things that frustrate readers about the structure. The middle section drags. There are long stretches of procedural detail about hospital logistics and legal maneuvering that slow the momentum. About a hundred pages into the book I thought I was going to drop it. Once it picks up again around the grand jury proceedings, it's compelling, but the pacing is uneven. Also, if you're looking for a straightforward condemnation of anyone, you won't find it. Every person in this book made terrible decisions under impossible conditions. That's the whole uncomfortable takeaway. One edge case worth noting. Some people report that the book's treatment of the lethal injection allegations feels too balanced. A few reviewers called it apologetic toward the medical staff. I'd push back on that reading. The book presents evidence both ways and lets the reader sit with the discomfort. Whether that feels like balance or evasion depends entirely on what you bring to it. I found it honest, but I understand why some readers wanted firmer answers.
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